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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.357640973
EAN num: 9780393320084
ISBN number: 0393320081
Label: W. W. Norton & Company
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 384
Printing Date: 2000-04
Publishing house: W. W. Norton & Company
Sale Popularity Level: 343319
Studio: W. W. Norton & Company
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Brief Book Summary:
A must-have for any diehard baseball fan, this lively, authoritative book answers the classic question 'Who was the greatest team of all time?' It's a debate nearly as old as the sport itself. Sure, there have been plenty of great baseball teams--but which was the best ever? While it seems like an unwinnable argument, the authors of Baseball Dynasties have risen to the challenge. They took the top fifteen teams of the twentieth century, ran them through rigorous statistical analysis, and threw in some good old-fashioned opinion in their quest to determine, definitively, who was the greatest team in the history of baseball. Looking at continued brilliance over time (no one-season wonders allowed), Hall of Famers on the roster, offensive and defensive production, performance in the postseason, and numerous other tangibles and intangibles, Eddie Epstein and Rob Neyer put each team under the microscope--and picked a winner. Who will come out on top? Was it the 1927 Yankees, the legendary squad blessed with both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig? Or how about Earl Weaver's 1970 Orioles, who over a three-year span dominated their opponents at a higher level than any other team this century? Full of anecdotes, intriguing facts, and scores of statistics, Baseball Dynasties is a fascinating look at baseball history certain to provoke, entertain, and edify baseball fans of all ages.
Amazon.com:
There are good teams, and there are great teams, and then there are teams that cross into legend where a case can be built for naming them the best team of all time. The Cubs of Tinker to Evers to Chance. The Yankees of Ruth and Gehrig, and later DiMaggio and Dickey, and, later still, Mantle and Maris and Ford, and still later, O'Neill and Jeter and Williams and Cone. The '29 A's, the '55 Dodgers, the '70 Orioles, the Big Red Machine. Rob Neyer and Eddie Epstein identify 15 of these powerhouses, assess the overall stats and individual achievements of each, examine the durability of the numbers, and compare and contrast them relative to one another in an endeavor to identify the one team that truly lived up to--and exceeded--its potential to stand alone.
It's a fascinating performance, as insightful as it is argumentative. (Neyer, a columnist for ESPN.com, and Epstein, a former baseball exec, don't always see eye to eye, and some of their disagreements are posted as dialogues.) Along the way, they debunk some myths (Mantle's 565-foot home run) and create new stats to test relative performance (one makes Johnny Bench the best catcher of all time--no problem there--with Mickey Cochrane second). Poignantly, they also project some 'what-ifs,' as in what if Lou Gehrig had stayed healthy for the '39 Yankees.
After parsing and reparsing team after team, Neyer and Epstein arrive at their conclusion, and while they pretty much disagree on places 2 through 15, they manage to present a unified front for No. 1. It's a team in pinstripes, but probably not the first--or second--to come to mind. Given the precision with which way they lay out their case, you'll have to work awfully hard to overturn their verdict. --Jeff Silverman
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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I bought this book 7 years ago and i don't know how many times i've read it after reading it cover to cover the week i very first got it! It's been borrowed by friends and taken on vacations and has started and ended many debates and arguments over the greatest teams in MLB history. It's a unique book with chapters on each team consisting of statistical info like seasonal win-loss records and post season results, pennant races, how they fared against contenders, runs scored & allowed & sabermetric figures like Pythagorean Winning Percentage and Offensive Winning Percentages. The every day lineup for each team is posted and commented on. Bench players are listed too and seasonal stats are given for both. The pitchers get the same treatment and are fully scouted. Then we get to the really fun part like how they were built, what brought them down, most valuable player, worst regular, Hall of Famers, the Pennant Race, the Series and the Ballpark where the team resided. Each team has several essays by the author's on the team's seasonal highlights, important & not so important players & World Series appearances as well as fascinating debates on baseball lore like the recent questioning of the brilliance of the Tinkers to Evers to Chance infield of the 1906 Cubs & what might have been for the immensely talented but tragically flawed Darryl Strawberry. A Must Have for lovers of baseball this will simultaneously keep the hot stove burning and the rain delay blues away.
Rated by buyers -
If you are the type that thinks that pennants are won with 90% guts and a winning attitude, rather than talent, stay away. But if you are a Moneyball fan, you'll like this.
Rated by buyers -
To Bryan Lutes of Aurora, Illinois: The 72-74 A's are covered in the book. They are covered in Chapter 15. They are one of the fifteen teams that are rated as great dynasties.
Rated by buyers 
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Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed reading the book, but I found the book to be lacking in continuity. It's a difficult book to read from cover-to-cover due to the abundance of statistical analysis, but all of the number-crunching done in the book is rather anticlimactic. The issue of "who is the greatest team of all time" is handled more as a sidebar than as the main theme of the book. I thought the authors would have been better served discussing the statistical quirks that were generated by the number crunching and different types of `dynasties' discussed (like the 1975-1985 Royals). Instead, we got a lot of different methods to conclude "Boy, those 1961 Yankees sure did hit a lot of homers", which isn't very interesting. In terms of personal opinion, I was disappointed that a 3-peat team like the 1972-1974 A's was left out of the book because they didn't win 100+ games in the regular season. It demonstrated that although there was a plethora of statistical references, the overall criteria as to deciding what constitutes a dynasty was as vague and unexplained as the authors' opinions on the greatest dynasty of all-time.
Rated by buyers -
If you enjoy statistical arguments about the relative greatness of different teams, mixed with interesting historical anecdotes, this is for you. Well-written, intelligent and engrossing. I love it.
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